I could sense the excitement in the voices bring us the news of the pandemic, in the headlines taking us closer every day to phase six of a pandemic, and I sensed the disappointment in the grudging admissions by world crisis managers and the media that swine flu was a fizzer. We'd sensed that it was a furphy days before when the tally of victims dropped like a ball bouncing down stairs. We were working hard to accept 180 cases of swine flu as a pandemic but when it hit 30 confirmed cases the anticipation was over. On Sunday the world's swine flu death toll hit a lousy 50, making it one of the world's safest viruses.

The World Health Organisation has been trying too hard to generate a pandemic, and its warning after the first-round fizzer that the second wave "would be the biggest outbreak the world has faced in the 21st Century" was nothing short of comical. In a black sort of way. I mean, we couldn't find much humour in our disappointment.

And that's what I want you to admit today. You were disappointed, weren't you, that the swine flu pandemic was a dud? We crave horror, as in asteroids, SARS, tsunamis, bird flu, Y2K, the ozone hole, terrorism, earthquake, pandemic, and even global economic collapse. So long as it doesn't enter our home, of course. And, of course, it won't. Horror is something we watch happening to other people.

Come on, admit it.